Is it good for babies to eat their fingers? What are the benefits?

During the growth and development of newborns, sucking their fingers is probably the most unavoidable action and thing. However, adults always find it difficult to understand the inner world of infants and young children, so they will directly push the baby's hands away. In fact, sucking fingers in the early stage is not a bad thing. Children begin to understand the world from this. So is it good for babies to love sucking their fingers? What are the benefits?

Is it OK for a newborn to suck his fingers?

Eye-hand coordination stage: Newborns will begin to like chewing their hands about two to three months after birth. This is a big signal of the baby's IQ development and one of the precursors to the child's gradual entry into the process of hand function differentiation and eye-hand coordination.

The brain is strengthening: Newborn babies can only make fists and wave them randomly at first, because their brains cannot yet command them to put their hands in their mouths. But when they are about two or three months old, as their brains grow and develop, babies begin to learn two kinds of movements.

Feel the outside world with your mouth: At this stage, babies mainly understand the world through their mouths. Children think that their hands are part of the outside world, so they always like to put their hands or fingers in their mouths to suck and perceive.

The benefits of sucking fingers for newborns

All evolutions are simple: at first the baby will only put the whole hands into the mouth, then only suck two or three fingers, and finally progress to only focusing on one finger and sucking on that finger; in other words, from clumsily sucking the whole hands, the baby develops to flexibly and agilely sucking a single finger.

No error in grasping: The act of sucking the hands can make the baby's hands and eyes more coordinated, and also lay a good foundation for learning to accurately grasp toys in about five months.

Rapid behavioral development: Under normal circumstances, whether it is sitting, crawling, standing, etc., the baby's behavior will develop rapidly, and of course the behavior of the fingers will become more delicate and flexible. If the baby grows up to be able to play with toys independently, the baby's finger sucking will gradually begin to decrease.

Stabilize children's mood: Parents should have noticed that when babies suck their fingers, they are generally much quieter and rarely cry or make noises. Basically, some children use sucking their fingers to calm their mood, so this also shows that sucking their fingers plays an important role in their psychological development.

Precautions for newborns to eat their fingers

No need to stop strongly: Parents do not need to be too nervous and worried about the situation of babies sucking their fingers, and there is no need to forcibly prohibit it. If the child's movements are too much and too frequent, parents can often touch and fiddle with the baby's hands to try to divert his attention from sucking his fingers.

Maintain hand hygiene: It is worth noting that what parents need to do is to keep the baby's hands clean to ensure that the area around the baby's lips is clean and dry to prevent problems such as eczema.

Pay attention to the growth stage: If the child is around three or four years old and still has the habit of sucking his hands frequently, then parents should pay special attention, as this is considered bad behavior for the baby; it is recommended to carefully and patiently understand the factors involved, and then correct the wrong actions.